for the distinction between a thanatology and a necrology

What were the Kalahari Bushmen doing right now? Nothing. How about the Quebec separatists? Also nothing. I think it must have been the only time every single human being on planet Earth was unified in purpose, in that they were doing nothing more than nourishing the scavengers. Being Nutritious…

The Jews were as dead as the Christians, the Muslims as dead as the Buddhists, the Hindus as dead as the atheists. Nobody human was saved. The Pope was as dead as Nietzsche…

– Nick Sagan, idlewild, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2003, p. 179

– Garden of Death, painting by Hugo Simberg

Nutritious and Delicious.

Nutritious protected and nourished, creating vast extraplanar hierarchies with stable interactions and coded laws. Delicious perverted these hierarchies to her own ends.

The Ionian Awakening was Nutritious. The Marx Brothers were Delicious. The Salem witch trials were a little of both.

– Ibid., pp. 177-8

in this first of a trilogy, the primary character, Halloween, takes North America, literally, on some kind of familiar obdurate flight away from the recreation of civilisation. Whether towards the New World or a further thanatological rejection remains to be seen.

And the protective software in the VR world’s called PACE. And:

Did they know that as a lowly caterpillar, the monarch butterfly eats a steady diet of poison? Milkweed is a strong poison but the monarch can take it. On the other hand, a bird that swallows the monarch will swallow the poison, get sick and quite possibly die.

– Ibid., p. 274

Posted by simon on Monday, April 14th, 2008, at 11:42 pm, and filed under pique-assiettes.